the last verse ; harry potter [2]

twenty five ; diana dumbledore

Hogsmeade, the small village below Hogwarts was a quaint town, though now it was ravaged by Death Eaters sent to watch for the Daughter and the Boy Who Lived. It was still daylight when she Apparated into a side street just behind the Hog's Head, and in front of her stood the back door to the little pub, which led to the set of stairs up to the bedrooms, where she'd be able to find Aberforth Dumbledore's quarters.

And Aberforth, as secretive as he was pained, was not expecting guests. His hour was entirely unhopeful, sitting beside his little sister's portrait, dreading the thought of any more students wandering out from behind it. It was not that he wanted them to suffer: it killed him to see them with bruises and blood, wilting smiles on their painfully hopeful faces, but he could not help them. He was just a man, the brother of the Only One the Dark Lord Ever Feared, the last and only Dumbledore still alive (though that was not entirely true). He was just a man, a lonely, sad shell of a man, and he believed he could not help.

He did not expect the face of Diana Riddle, so similar to Vera's, to storm into his living room. Though he had jinxed every entrance to be Imperturbed, he did not take into mind the fact that Diana had something as mundane as a key.

He did not expect her to ask him of Vera, to ask him of the night Diana was born. That was a well-kept secret, shared only between an amount of people he could count on one hand, and one of them was asleep in the Slytherin Chamber and has been for almost two decades.

Diana looked so much like Vera, so much like the girl that Aberforth had all but raised since she started at Hogwarts.

Diana looked so much like his daughter that it startled him.

And he made the mistake of saying that fact aloud, and Diana was struck silent, and the girl began to cry.

Your daughter? she asked quietly between cries. What do you mean?

And Aberforth was forced to explain, explain the thing he had kept quiet for so long; a secret, one not even his brother had known.

He was a grandfather. A father.  It was something that he had never imagined as a child, but here he was: the father of the woman who loved the Slytherin heir, the grandfather of the girl who was born to destroy her own father.

And he only nodded to his granddaughter. He was so secretive, he wanted to hurt himself for doing this, for being so selfish as to keep a secret so grand as this just for the sake of himself. He hadn't even told Vera until he accidentally let it slip on one of his rare drunken laments. She had yelled at him for not telling her. He did not blame her.

And Diana looked with watery eyes toward the portrait of Ariana Dumbledore, the sister of her grandfather, and she looked back at his blue eyes, the same as Albus Dumbledore's. Albus Dumbledore, the brother of her grandfather.

My grandmother descended from Merlin?

Yes, he told her.

Why did you not tell me?

There were so many things he wanted to say, so many things he should've said, though he could not find the perfect words to justify his secrecy to her. His granddaughter.

It's time for me to wake my mother, Diana told him. It's time for me to wake your daughter.

I'd say you were right, he told her. I'd say it's time to wake Vera Beauregard.

+

Someone broke the Hogsmeade curfew. It signaled them all with an ear-shattering wailing alarm, the sound that meant someone was in the streets. Death Eaters shouted below, and Aberforth gruffly made his way to peak out of his window, and Diana had her eyes trained on Ariana Dumbledore painted beautifully in the portrait. She could see the resemblance between Ariana, herself, and her mother, and it was so baffling to her that she had to take a minute to steel herself.